Comme des Garçons / Spring 2013 RTW

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“Crushing. The energy of an explosion,” said Rei Kawakubo backstage at the Commes des Garçons show—if you can call the half-shelter of their open-air concrete river wharf a stage. Which, of course, it wasn’t in any usual sense, and neither was the “fashion” because Rei Kawakubo doesn’t really do fashion. Over and again, she leads it by ignoring it, yet of all the designers, she’s the one who can set new agendas by challenging only herself. Last season, the ripple effect of her show of flat cutout shapes made impact at record speed with graphic flatness now a summer trend in countless collections. This time—with all eyes on her—she set about a collection which seemed to be about the process of designing itself, haphazardly crushing all the scraps and revisions of the toile-stages of dressmaking and tailoring into soft-sculpture composites. The young British artist Graham Hudson, who works with found materials, made her scrap-metal crowns to match, towering headgear jauntily soldered together from upturned paint cans, wing mirrors, aluminium food packaging, brass brackets, and broken toy cars.

How did this come about? It didn’t seem to be a somber treatise on the need for waste-reduction and recycling in the garment industry. Instead, you could imagine Kawakubo walking into her studio in Tokyo one morning while striving to arrive at what she’d do next, glancing at a chaotic pile of half-completed or rejected lapels, sleeve shapes, shoulder pads and ragged canvas offcuts, and seeing beauty in it. Perhaps, like an artist, she wanted to preserve the accidental juxtapositions, spontaneously tacking on the pieces to build a new 3-D form out of the folds, padding, and puffed sleeves. Actually, there was more order in the apparently random patchworking than first met the eye. All the work was bunched onto short dresses, tops, and skirts, giving the whole collection a quirkily charming air.

As for the agenda-setting potential of this collection? Let’s wait and see. Part of the glee Kawakubo might have taken in making it was the thought: “Let them copy this one then!” Or, on the other hand, who knows? She might be completely indifferent as to whether she’s emulated or not. What’s certain is that she’ll be the first to translate this lineup of toile-sculptures into the simpler, wearable T-shirts, skirts, and sweaters that are always stocked alongside the full-strength runway pieces in her stores. It’s at that point the fashion industry’s style-recyclers typically step in and start churning out the Comme-inspired ideas as they always do—eventually.